Re: The Gradual Massacre (GBS2G4) [Round 2: The Museum]
09-06-2010, 02:38 PM
Originally posted on MSPA by MrGuy.
"So, dear, how is that little relationship of yours playing out? I can't imagine well. She's already breaking your heart, isn't she? Nobody else with you either." She sidled up to Holly, who merely stared back. "Quite a shame you don't seem to have anyone backing you up. Come now, stick with me. Our strengths are perfect complements. Together, we're all but guaranteed to survive until the end." Holly simply stared her down. "Don't give me that. I know what's behind that... uh, naynit-infested skull of yours." She pointed accusingly, backing away and preparing to attack if necessary. "I don't know what any of this stuff is, but there's two things I do know. One, two people around here almost certainly do, and I'm going to find them and figure out a way to get rid of you once and for all. And two, this little... exhibit only proves me right."
The Countess turned her head briefly, turned it back, and nodded placidly, but Holly could detect the... well, frightened wasn't precisely the right word, obviously, but some kind of emotional undercurrent along those lines. "Yes, like you weren't practically gunning all your life to have an exhibit here. Metaphorically. Besides, those two are just going to run away from you, aren't they? So much simpler to simply kill them. You know that's what they plan to do to you." Holly narrowed her eyes. "Shut up. Algernon couldn't bring himself to kill an unarmed goblin who'd stolen his life savings. And Aic... has..." She paused for a moment. This is so stupid. I'm not letting her do this to me. "Hmph. Anyway, nice little chat, but I have people I actually want to find, so I'll just bid you goodbye." With this, she grabbed hold of a nearby robot currently on what appeared to be a highly "improved" version of The Rack, and did her best to draw out the feelings of helplessness. Her hand stung for a moment. She wasn't used to taking emotions out of things, at least not in the literal sense, but it'd have to do.
With that, Holly turned her hands toward the walking pile of clockwork and shot out three brilliant blue orbs, which quickly transformed into chains, binding Countess to the ground and acting as a gag. Holly started to leave when she heard a sound she had never expected to: the sound of breaking steel. The Countess emitted an almost imperceptible noise before she tore the chains right out of the ground, causing several links to simply remove themselves and clatter to the ground, and quickly absorbed the remainder into her being. Holly simply blinked, unable to think of anything more productive to do from the sheer shock.
The Countess continued her slow approach, a horrifying grin unfurling upon her face. “So it's going to be that way, is it? I can live with that. You know, I never got a chance to reciprocate your little gift in the classroom.” She slid her sharpened finger against the very automaton Holly had drawn the chains from, simultaneously leaving a deep scratch and creating a rather painful noise. “So why don’t you just stand still, and it will all end... well, not as slowly, anyway.”
Holly backed away, wincing slightly but doing her best to maintain a cool head. “This isn’t necessary, Countess. There are... there are weaker contestants around. Why not kill, say, Algernon? He’d surely be fun to deal with. I could even help!” At this, her assailant simply let out a chilling laugh. “Now, now, dear, you know that’s not going to work. For one, people like him are best saved for last. Simple. Easier to get rid of. No, it’s the large threats you need to get rid of first. Consider that a small compliment if you’d like.” She lashed out with a claw, stopping just above an inch short of Holly’s nose. “And besides, you had your chance, Tallbirch. A bit late to attempt to unsay your accusations and such. Not that it matters, because even if we could trust each other, nothing would change.” She slashed forward again and again, each time just barely avoiding doing any actual damage, simply reveling in Holly’s expression slowly and jerkily becoming more and more fearful, while effortlessly dodging, or even simply shrugging off, any of the elf’s attempts to strike back. “One of us... would have to kill... the other!” Each piece of the sentence was punctuated with another attack, each of which came closer and closer. “The only question... is how quickly... the alliance would... fall apart!” And with this she drove her claw into Holly’s arm, tearing the sleeve of her dress, allowing a small stream of blood to flow outwards.
The elf winced as Countess slowly drew the claw out of her arm. “You have it easy, you know. Lucas was eaten alive. Those strange little bugs gnawing away at his flesh like a horrible cyclone of blades... a bit of stabbing is nothing, really.” Her grin, seemingly impossibly, managed to get even larger. Holly, despite her best attempts to accelerate, had simply gotten backed up against a wall, and as useful as that rock had been, she now felt as if she was dissolving into a puddle of sweat as she awaited her death. She attempted to get something out of her bag, but her arm was simply swatted away. The Countess proceeded to slash at her repeatedly, producing several more gashes, before knocking her to the ground with an elbow. As she bore down upon her prey, her eyes perfectly said what was otherwise unspoken: I would ask if you have any last words, dearie, but that would imply I actually cared what they were.
The elf’s eye twitched as her vivisection approached. This was it, then. She’d had a good run, she supposed, if a bit of a short one. Briefly glancing up, she noticed that the animatronic above her-- yet another dictator, it would happen-- seemed to be taking in her displeasure almost as much as The Countess herself. Holly, despite the myriad of emotions that would more logically stem from this, simply felt angry. Who the hell did this guy think he was, smirking at her like that when he wasn’t even the one who was going to-- fail to kill her. Holly was suddenly struck with realization as Countess’s claw stabbed downwards toward her abdomen, preferring to remove the less vital organs first rather than going straight for the heart. Time seemed to slow to a crawl as the claw barreled towards the stomach before stopping just an inch short as four of the thorns closest to the handle of Holly’s whip disintegrated, the resulting energy firing directly into the amalgamation’s legs.
The clockwork creature emitted a shriek of pain. Holly rocketed to her feet and started fleeing again, running her hand over the smoothed section of her whip, more than a little annoyed at the loss of the thorns attached, but figuring she could find a way to replace them in fairly short order. The Countess shook her head and began chasing her, limping slightly due to the pain being localized to a couple of her legs. Holly dashed off as fast as she could, vaulting over a pit of spikes (not that she particularly needed to, given the bridge of robot corpses that had formed on it). She cursed repeatedly, trying to pick up Acacia's trail again, which only led to dye spattering in her face. Her breathing got heavier as she did her best to convert her fear into a smokescreen behind her, which succeeded but also got quite a bit of soot on her. After she was finally sure she couldn't hear the Countess's incessant ticking anymore, she slowed to walking speed.
God dammit, why did I pick her in the first place? Of all the people in this battle, wasn't anyone better? The elf paused. Was there? I better think about it. The knight wouldn't have been too useful, all things considered; the Countess had only proven her guess as to her backstabbing nature correct; tentacle-face, whose name she had never bothered to learn in the first place, might have been alright, but her sanity was tenuous already and he might have been a bigger risk; Algernon seemed useful at first, but he also seemed fairly weak (emotionally-speaking) and there'd only be so much he could do before she ended up partnered with somebody who couldn't speak or read, fight, hell, maybe he wouldn't even be able to feed himself, she wasn't sure how deep the whole thing went; She'd already tried Pluck and if that Reaper was any question he didn't have anything similar to control; even if the demon guy didn't have more personalities to deal with than Aic herself, she could already take care of the emotional front, so he wouldn't be much help, and besides, he was dead now anyway. That left Ouro, who was probably unlikely to ally with anyone edible, and Acacia. Holly emitted a sigh of relief. Guess I picked right after all.
She briefly passed through a corridor containing several exhibits on psychological torture, displaying (among other things) a replica of a room designed to convince people they were insane, a government's catalogue of all its citizens' greatest fears (next to a door simply marked "101"), a device designed to create rather unpleasant self-fulfilling prophecies... the list went on, and most slightly buoyed the elf's mood, allowing her a brief chuckle. At least until she reached the end of the exhibit, which showcased a small metal disc and a set of footprints marked "STAND HERE." Holly paused. The trail led in a different direction, but something about the exhibit intrigued her. She tentatively considered testing the device, but quickly put it out of her mind. Unfortunately, her attempt to leave was met by a man in a rather disheveled jacket who violently pushed her into the exhibit. Quickly, mirrored walls sprouted from the ground, trapping Holly within. She looked around, noticing several robots who seemed to have torn out their own inner workings to spare themselves.
After dithering over moving to the footsteps for a few minutes, the walls slowly began closing in and Holly emitted a small yelp. "Alright, alright!" She quickly headed for the footsteps, knowing something terrible was about to occur but unable to stimy the inexplicable desire to proceed. Sure enough, as soon as she was in place, an image began coalescing above the disc, simultaneously with her receiving a rather painful headache. Holly began to feel nauseous upon realizing it was, in fact, Aic, who proceeded to laugh at her. "Why, hello, Holly! You haven't gotten yourself trapped on my account, have you?" Holly scowled. "You're not the real Aic and we both know it. Leave me alone."
The hologram produced a grin almost identical to the real thing. "Just because I'm not really her doesn't change the fact that you know she was right. You can't seriously believe I felt anything for you, can you? Here I thought that you were smarter than that, but clearly I was wrong." The hologram emitted a rather disturbing attempt at a laugh. "You should have stuck to shallow, meaningless relationships, elf. They couldn't hurt you like this, could they?"
Holly stared down the vision. "Listen, you. You're designed to screw with me, and I'm not going to give you a chance to succeed." She immediately launched a kick towards the wall, which rather annoyingly failed to shatter. Once again, the torturer chuckled. "For someone who's unfazed by this, you sure are doing your best to escape. Are you afraid to confront the truth? Are you afraid to admit that after years of using people as tools, the same is finally happening to you?" The elf winced and shook her head. "She's not like that, damn you! You wouldn't know!" She immediately began drawing from her resolve, creating a spear of rock to drive through the mirror. Her tormenter simply kept up. "I wouldn't be here if you didn't know it was true, Holly. I come from your mind, after all. Not that it matters to me; you're dead one way or the other."
Holly smashed the spear through the wall, shattering it, and turned back to the hologram. "Well, your position is very illuminating. Allow me a rebuttal." At this, she poured her anger into the spear, the tip of which promptly began glowing brightly—first with an orange tinge, then red, until finally it began to glow a bright white with all the heat contained with in. She proceeded to drive it deep into the offending device, which slowly melted to nothing. The nonexistent Aic simply continued to laugh as she began to crackle and dissipate. Holly walked back onto the trail, shivering slightly. Stupid illusion. She-- it's lying, right? Of course it is. It's designed to be a torture device. I'm not going soft, it just wants me to think I am.
Holly stopped short. There, out of the corner of her eye, she saw her quarry, looking into an exhibit and smirking. At this point, her mind was filled with revenge fantasies. She wanted to rip the boomer off of Acacia's neck and punch her until she couldn't feel anything, bury her under a pile of rubble, drown her with condensed sorrow, put her in the machine herself to see what happened to her. All these and more whirled through her head at a breakneck pace, and she wanted to enact each one of them in sequence.
Instead, she simply let out a weak "Now let her out", and for the first time since she was three years old, Holly Tallbirch fell to the ground and sobbed.
"So, dear, how is that little relationship of yours playing out? I can't imagine well. She's already breaking your heart, isn't she? Nobody else with you either." She sidled up to Holly, who merely stared back. "Quite a shame you don't seem to have anyone backing you up. Come now, stick with me. Our strengths are perfect complements. Together, we're all but guaranteed to survive until the end." Holly simply stared her down. "Don't give me that. I know what's behind that... uh, naynit-infested skull of yours." She pointed accusingly, backing away and preparing to attack if necessary. "I don't know what any of this stuff is, but there's two things I do know. One, two people around here almost certainly do, and I'm going to find them and figure out a way to get rid of you once and for all. And two, this little... exhibit only proves me right."
The Countess turned her head briefly, turned it back, and nodded placidly, but Holly could detect the... well, frightened wasn't precisely the right word, obviously, but some kind of emotional undercurrent along those lines. "Yes, like you weren't practically gunning all your life to have an exhibit here. Metaphorically. Besides, those two are just going to run away from you, aren't they? So much simpler to simply kill them. You know that's what they plan to do to you." Holly narrowed her eyes. "Shut up. Algernon couldn't bring himself to kill an unarmed goblin who'd stolen his life savings. And Aic... has..." She paused for a moment. This is so stupid. I'm not letting her do this to me. "Hmph. Anyway, nice little chat, but I have people I actually want to find, so I'll just bid you goodbye." With this, she grabbed hold of a nearby robot currently on what appeared to be a highly "improved" version of The Rack, and did her best to draw out the feelings of helplessness. Her hand stung for a moment. She wasn't used to taking emotions out of things, at least not in the literal sense, but it'd have to do.
With that, Holly turned her hands toward the walking pile of clockwork and shot out three brilliant blue orbs, which quickly transformed into chains, binding Countess to the ground and acting as a gag. Holly started to leave when she heard a sound she had never expected to: the sound of breaking steel. The Countess emitted an almost imperceptible noise before she tore the chains right out of the ground, causing several links to simply remove themselves and clatter to the ground, and quickly absorbed the remainder into her being. Holly simply blinked, unable to think of anything more productive to do from the sheer shock.
The Countess continued her slow approach, a horrifying grin unfurling upon her face. “So it's going to be that way, is it? I can live with that. You know, I never got a chance to reciprocate your little gift in the classroom.” She slid her sharpened finger against the very automaton Holly had drawn the chains from, simultaneously leaving a deep scratch and creating a rather painful noise. “So why don’t you just stand still, and it will all end... well, not as slowly, anyway.”
Holly backed away, wincing slightly but doing her best to maintain a cool head. “This isn’t necessary, Countess. There are... there are weaker contestants around. Why not kill, say, Algernon? He’d surely be fun to deal with. I could even help!” At this, her assailant simply let out a chilling laugh. “Now, now, dear, you know that’s not going to work. For one, people like him are best saved for last. Simple. Easier to get rid of. No, it’s the large threats you need to get rid of first. Consider that a small compliment if you’d like.” She lashed out with a claw, stopping just above an inch short of Holly’s nose. “And besides, you had your chance, Tallbirch. A bit late to attempt to unsay your accusations and such. Not that it matters, because even if we could trust each other, nothing would change.” She slashed forward again and again, each time just barely avoiding doing any actual damage, simply reveling in Holly’s expression slowly and jerkily becoming more and more fearful, while effortlessly dodging, or even simply shrugging off, any of the elf’s attempts to strike back. “One of us... would have to kill... the other!” Each piece of the sentence was punctuated with another attack, each of which came closer and closer. “The only question... is how quickly... the alliance would... fall apart!” And with this she drove her claw into Holly’s arm, tearing the sleeve of her dress, allowing a small stream of blood to flow outwards.
The elf winced as Countess slowly drew the claw out of her arm. “You have it easy, you know. Lucas was eaten alive. Those strange little bugs gnawing away at his flesh like a horrible cyclone of blades... a bit of stabbing is nothing, really.” Her grin, seemingly impossibly, managed to get even larger. Holly, despite her best attempts to accelerate, had simply gotten backed up against a wall, and as useful as that rock had been, she now felt as if she was dissolving into a puddle of sweat as she awaited her death. She attempted to get something out of her bag, but her arm was simply swatted away. The Countess proceeded to slash at her repeatedly, producing several more gashes, before knocking her to the ground with an elbow. As she bore down upon her prey, her eyes perfectly said what was otherwise unspoken: I would ask if you have any last words, dearie, but that would imply I actually cared what they were.
The elf’s eye twitched as her vivisection approached. This was it, then. She’d had a good run, she supposed, if a bit of a short one. Briefly glancing up, she noticed that the animatronic above her-- yet another dictator, it would happen-- seemed to be taking in her displeasure almost as much as The Countess herself. Holly, despite the myriad of emotions that would more logically stem from this, simply felt angry. Who the hell did this guy think he was, smirking at her like that when he wasn’t even the one who was going to-- fail to kill her. Holly was suddenly struck with realization as Countess’s claw stabbed downwards toward her abdomen, preferring to remove the less vital organs first rather than going straight for the heart. Time seemed to slow to a crawl as the claw barreled towards the stomach before stopping just an inch short as four of the thorns closest to the handle of Holly’s whip disintegrated, the resulting energy firing directly into the amalgamation’s legs.
The clockwork creature emitted a shriek of pain. Holly rocketed to her feet and started fleeing again, running her hand over the smoothed section of her whip, more than a little annoyed at the loss of the thorns attached, but figuring she could find a way to replace them in fairly short order. The Countess shook her head and began chasing her, limping slightly due to the pain being localized to a couple of her legs. Holly dashed off as fast as she could, vaulting over a pit of spikes (not that she particularly needed to, given the bridge of robot corpses that had formed on it). She cursed repeatedly, trying to pick up Acacia's trail again, which only led to dye spattering in her face. Her breathing got heavier as she did her best to convert her fear into a smokescreen behind her, which succeeded but also got quite a bit of soot on her. After she was finally sure she couldn't hear the Countess's incessant ticking anymore, she slowed to walking speed.
God dammit, why did I pick her in the first place? Of all the people in this battle, wasn't anyone better? The elf paused. Was there? I better think about it. The knight wouldn't have been too useful, all things considered; the Countess had only proven her guess as to her backstabbing nature correct; tentacle-face, whose name she had never bothered to learn in the first place, might have been alright, but her sanity was tenuous already and he might have been a bigger risk; Algernon seemed useful at first, but he also seemed fairly weak (emotionally-speaking) and there'd only be so much he could do before she ended up partnered with somebody who couldn't speak or read, fight, hell, maybe he wouldn't even be able to feed himself, she wasn't sure how deep the whole thing went; She'd already tried Pluck and if that Reaper was any question he didn't have anything similar to control; even if the demon guy didn't have more personalities to deal with than Aic herself, she could already take care of the emotional front, so he wouldn't be much help, and besides, he was dead now anyway. That left Ouro, who was probably unlikely to ally with anyone edible, and Acacia. Holly emitted a sigh of relief. Guess I picked right after all.
She briefly passed through a corridor containing several exhibits on psychological torture, displaying (among other things) a replica of a room designed to convince people they were insane, a government's catalogue of all its citizens' greatest fears (next to a door simply marked "101"), a device designed to create rather unpleasant self-fulfilling prophecies... the list went on, and most slightly buoyed the elf's mood, allowing her a brief chuckle. At least until she reached the end of the exhibit, which showcased a small metal disc and a set of footprints marked "STAND HERE." Holly paused. The trail led in a different direction, but something about the exhibit intrigued her. She tentatively considered testing the device, but quickly put it out of her mind. Unfortunately, her attempt to leave was met by a man in a rather disheveled jacket who violently pushed her into the exhibit. Quickly, mirrored walls sprouted from the ground, trapping Holly within. She looked around, noticing several robots who seemed to have torn out their own inner workings to spare themselves.
After dithering over moving to the footsteps for a few minutes, the walls slowly began closing in and Holly emitted a small yelp. "Alright, alright!" She quickly headed for the footsteps, knowing something terrible was about to occur but unable to stimy the inexplicable desire to proceed. Sure enough, as soon as she was in place, an image began coalescing above the disc, simultaneously with her receiving a rather painful headache. Holly began to feel nauseous upon realizing it was, in fact, Aic, who proceeded to laugh at her. "Why, hello, Holly! You haven't gotten yourself trapped on my account, have you?" Holly scowled. "You're not the real Aic and we both know it. Leave me alone."
The hologram produced a grin almost identical to the real thing. "Just because I'm not really her doesn't change the fact that you know she was right. You can't seriously believe I felt anything for you, can you? Here I thought that you were smarter than that, but clearly I was wrong." The hologram emitted a rather disturbing attempt at a laugh. "You should have stuck to shallow, meaningless relationships, elf. They couldn't hurt you like this, could they?"
Holly stared down the vision. "Listen, you. You're designed to screw with me, and I'm not going to give you a chance to succeed." She immediately launched a kick towards the wall, which rather annoyingly failed to shatter. Once again, the torturer chuckled. "For someone who's unfazed by this, you sure are doing your best to escape. Are you afraid to confront the truth? Are you afraid to admit that after years of using people as tools, the same is finally happening to you?" The elf winced and shook her head. "She's not like that, damn you! You wouldn't know!" She immediately began drawing from her resolve, creating a spear of rock to drive through the mirror. Her tormenter simply kept up. "I wouldn't be here if you didn't know it was true, Holly. I come from your mind, after all. Not that it matters to me; you're dead one way or the other."
Holly smashed the spear through the wall, shattering it, and turned back to the hologram. "Well, your position is very illuminating. Allow me a rebuttal." At this, she poured her anger into the spear, the tip of which promptly began glowing brightly—first with an orange tinge, then red, until finally it began to glow a bright white with all the heat contained with in. She proceeded to drive it deep into the offending device, which slowly melted to nothing. The nonexistent Aic simply continued to laugh as she began to crackle and dissipate. Holly walked back onto the trail, shivering slightly. Stupid illusion. She-- it's lying, right? Of course it is. It's designed to be a torture device. I'm not going soft, it just wants me to think I am.
Holly stopped short. There, out of the corner of her eye, she saw her quarry, looking into an exhibit and smirking. At this point, her mind was filled with revenge fantasies. She wanted to rip the boomer off of Acacia's neck and punch her until she couldn't feel anything, bury her under a pile of rubble, drown her with condensed sorrow, put her in the machine herself to see what happened to her. All these and more whirled through her head at a breakneck pace, and she wanted to enact each one of them in sequence.
Instead, she simply let out a weak "Now let her out", and for the first time since she was three years old, Holly Tallbirch fell to the ground and sobbed.